Simon silently held his fingers to Addy’s wrist on her uninjured side, taking her pulse. He frowned, then stood to move past Susan and wash his bloody hands at the sink in the small kitchen.
Joyce could have screamed at him for moving so close—within grabbing distance—of Susan.
Susan, who’d killed Trina. Susan, who’d stolen Joyce’s gun and shot Addy. All because she was a dissatisfied wife and mother.
Figure it out, she wanted to scream at Susan. We’re all miserable in our little lives. Figure out what makes you just a small bit happier and do it.
Susan stared ahead. Joyce could almost see the wheels turning in her brain.
Having Simon show up was unfortunate, but Joyce could work with this. Her eyes trained on the lighter, considering her next move.
Originally, she’d planned to bring Addy here with Laura and Susan to have a supposed big meet-up about Dermot and all his faults. Addy would be horrified after Victor’s visit to her office, and once Joyce pulled out the gun she knew Laura and Susan would have to listen to her instructions just as carefully.
Joyce saw Laura go into Dermot’s room that night, after Trina left. She’d followed Trina that evening, as she’d been in the habit of doing over the past year. Sometimes to follow Simon during his surveillance of Trina’s life. Sometimes just to feel a hidden control over the woman who was ruining hers. Joyce stayed at the opposite end of the hall, but in view of Dermot’s door, even after Trina left, because she didn’t want to admit to herself that she was jealous of Trina in a way she’d never been jealous of her husband.
Trina had to ruin everything, even Joyce’s fun.
If she’d known Laura was going to kill Dermot, Joyce would have stepped from out of the shadows and put herself between the girl and her lover. Dermot was promiscuous, but he was sweet in his way.
He didn’t deserve to die. Not from Joyce’s perspective, at least.
As it stood, she’d left after she saw Laura go into the hotel room. Joyce had thought there was no point in staying. She’d thought she already knew the ending.
Joyce had also suspected Susan was the one who killed Trina. She’d asked Victor to do some checking up on Dermot when she first realized both she and Simon were sleeping with him—one can never be too careful about potential blackmail—and Victor had uncovered Dermot’s lingering family connections, including an older sister with a history of institutionalization at a mental hospital. Meeting Susan at the nail salon had been a magnificent stroke of luck and meant Joyce didn’t need to track Susan down herself and lure her to town.
After that, it was easy for Joyce to see an ending to this year of hell.
Technically, she hadn’t needed to include Addy in all of this—what did the girl know about Joyce’s life or have to do with Trina and Tom? And Addy’s only mistake with Dermot was sleeping with him. But then Joyce noticed Addy’s growing interest in Trina, and Addy was the one who discovered Trina’s body. There was no way to be certain Addy didn’t know about Joyce and Simon’s double-dipping with Dermot, or what Trina may have told her about Simon’s accident with Tom. It would be so easy to wipe the slate clean entirely without her in the mix too.
Plus, controlling other people was an adrenaline rush like no other. Just like she would tell Susan, if she would only listen: You need to make your own happiness in this life.
Every woman for herself.
Simon and Joyce could start their life without any reminiscences of their past mistakes, and anyone who would connect them to Trina would be dead. As would anyone who could remind Simon about Dermot.
Susan had been the perfect scapegoat for Joyce’s plan.
And she still was.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE SUSAN
No one answered her question, so she asked it again.
“Is she going to be okay?”
Simon finally looked up towards her, but his eyes wouldn’t meet hers. Instead, they fell on the gun held nimbly in her left hand.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked. “So you can shoot her again?”
Susan felt her face crumple. She should have taken her medication today.
She should have taken it for the last month. Her husband thought she was at a spa, “getting better.” Her children had parent-teacher conferences next week. Riley, her second-grader, wasn’t doing well in school and her teachers were worried. Susan needed to be back in time for that.
“What?” Laura asked.
Susan must have been mumbling under her breath. “I have a meeting for my children’s school next week.”
“I don’t understand.” Laura looked dumbfounded.
“Are you serious?” Joyce coughed down her mean laugh.
“I should be home by now,” Susan reminded herself. “I haven’t packed lunches for the week yet.”
“You should have thought of that before you shot an innocent woman,” Simon reminded her. He stood behind her, drying his hands at the sink. Susan waved the gun to motion him back in front of her.
“You think I don’t know that?” Fury flared in her stomach. “You think I don’t understand that all of this was one huge mistake?”
“No, I don’t,” Joyce replied coolly.
“What’s wrong with you?” Laura was trying to sound confrontational, but Susan heard the fear in her voice.
“Nothing is wrong with me!” Susan held her hands up to her ears and pressed them down hard. Sometimes the world buzzed around her too much. So much it hurt.
“I need to figure out the ending.”
Addy moaned below them, and Simon knelt to check on her again.
“Didn’t it seem a little too unbelievable that I showed up to this derelict town where Dermot had been hiding out and found Trina Dell skulking around? What were the odds? Pretty good, I suppose, since a year ago I found Trina in the same place. And that I sent Dermot to seduce her that night at the wedding.”
